Are you a student or a young professional passionate about development and data? Do you care about poverty and inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? Then this blog contest is for you.

Regular readers of this space will know by now that we have run a periodic blog series - #LACfeaturegraph – that highlighted a particular data point from our LAC Equity Lab data portal and analyzed critical development issues across the region. Now this is your chance to be a part of this effort. You, too, can use the data from the LAC Equity Lab and come up with a blog entry that addresses some of these issues. Through the contest, we are looking for original, well-written posts whereby participants can share their perspective on poverty and equity issues in the LAC region and also recommend plausible public policy interventions.

The winner of this blog contest will get his or her entry published as part of the #LACfeaturegraph series. The winner will also have the opportunity to visit the World Bank Group headquarters in Washington D.C. at a later date to participate in a poverty event. Blog entries will be accepted for a month – from May 15, 2017 to June 15, 2017.

Before we get to the “how”, here is a bit of background for the uninitiated. The LAC Equity Lab (LEL) is a data-sharing platform featuring the latest indicators and analytics on poverty and inequality issues in the LAC region. The platform provides an interactive way to visualize development indicators. It has numerous data on a wide range of indicators from income inequality to ethnicity and from labor markets to gender. For instance, if you spend a few minutes exploring the site you will notice that the richest 1 percent in LAC have 11 percent of the total income, while the poorest 20 percent have less than 5 percent; or you could learn that unemployment is higher among the poorest 40 percent. You will also find the most recent regional poverty updates, which highlight that in 2015 poverty reduction and middle class growth stagnated after more than a decade of social gains.

To participate in the blog contest, here is what your blog post needs to include:

Focus on a topic about a particular country/sub-region or all of the region

Use data from the LAC Equity Lab to analyze the issue

Include up to two data visualizations with data extracted from the LAC Equity Lab

Recommend a possible public policy intervention

Do not exceed 500 words

To participate in the blog contest, download the application form and once finished you can email the entries to [email protected] with ‘LACfeaturegraph blog contest’ written in the subject. Make sure your blog entry is received by us before 11:59pm Washington, D.C. time on June 15, 2017.

In addition, your entry must comply with the Contest Guidelines in all respects in order to be eligible to win. Here are the contest guidelines. Good luck!

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